Non-State 2-1 (27 Feb 2018): Disruptive Technological Change, Securitised + The Anthropocene in Africa

By Péter MARTON

I am always interested in experimenting with new formats (it helps creativity). Starting today, I will occasionally offer my take here on various subjects in a two-in-one scheme. I find this to be prospectively fruitful as it helps one identify connections between seemingly unrelated issues. What follows this time is a brief consideration of the legacy as well as the future of technological change, related to stuff I have recently come across in my virtual travels over the interwebz. (Picture: an image from the movie District 9.)

1. An interesting trend to observe these days is the increasingly explicit reference to disruptive technological change as a possible threat in the yearly Worldwide Threat Assessments from the office of the US Director of National Intelligence (DNI) – and the US Intelligence Community, of course.

"Cyber" is a domain discussed since a long time now, with its obviously relevant implications for (inter)national security – see the 2015 report for example. For a change, the 2016 report then had "Cyber and Technology" as its first chapter. The 2017 report talked of "Emerging and Disruptive Technologies" in its second chapter, and the latest report has a section on "Emerging and Disruptive Technology" – it is not among the first chapters this time, but the title is in the singular, which may, in a sense, give it more emphasis, as in the singular it is technology overall that is implied to be disruptive, and not just some technologies.

The relevance of this, for this blog, is that the technologies mentioned in these reports obviously offer opportunities to non-state actors too – from humanitarian to violent non-state actors, or in short: to everyone (with good as well as bad consequences).

The possible threats identified in the last three Worldwide Threat Assessments include:

• the Internet of Things (hostile surveillance + DDOS/Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks),
• Artifical Intelligence (hostile military application thereof + unemployment in the economy + privacy concerns),
• the development of computer processing power potentially slowing down (losing qualitative edge over adversaries),
• the biotech revolution (misuse + unintended negative health effects),
• 3D printing and nanomaterials (disruptive economic change).

Forward-looking as this is in many respects, I'm surprised quantum computing is not considered here, especially when it comes to the mention of processing power.

2.  This great essay by Gabrielle Hecht discusses the origins and manifestations of the "antropocene" (the era in which man-made developments are the key driver of environmental change, whenever we declare that to have begun) in Africa, a regional perspective/focus that is rarely applied in the related discourse. One of the most interesting parts of the article for me was the discussion of regulatory arbitrage and the high contaminant content of diesel oil sold in Africa.

"...high contaminant content results from a deliberate strategy on the part of fuel brokers such as Trafigura and Vitol. These commodity traders blend the fuel stocks that they purchase from refineries, using different recipes for different destinations. Taking advantage of relaxed (or non-existent) regulatory limits across much of Africa, commodity traders maximise their profits by creating high-sulphur blends that are outlawed in Europe and North America. (...) European limits on sulphur in fuel stood at 10 parts per million (ppm). North America offered polluters a bit more leeway, with 15 ppm. Across Africa, however, the average limit was 2,000 ppm; Nigeria, the continent’s largest oil producer, had a standard of 3,000 ppm."

The work of the Lausanne-based NGO Public Eye is referenced in the article – here is the link to one of their reports: "Dirty Diesel: How Swiss Traders Flood Africa with Toxic Fuels" (2016).

In summary: as Science Fiction author William Gibson once said (in fact he said this more than once), "the future is already here, it's just not very evenly distributed" – and in many ways it is a disruptive presence, we may add.